


The Little Green Men

by tigs



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-04-03
Updated: 2005-04-03
Packaged: 2017-10-03 11:10:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigs/pseuds/tigs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'And the little green men just *carried* McKay off?'</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Little Green Men

"No," Ford said. "Seriously."

If John hadn't been running through woods that bordered on being jungle-like, pushing branches of *something* out of his way before they could thwap him in the face, he might have leaned back against one of the trees, leveled Ford with a steady look, and said slowly, disbelievingly, "Little green men. Really."

Instead, he panted the words, his voice bouncing with the movement of his feet over the rough terrain. He must have sounded skeptical enough, though, because from his place in front of John, Ford nodded and stuck his hand out about waist height and waved it around.

"Little men, about this tall. All green, obviously, or we wouldn't be referring to them as the little green men. And I'm telling you, Sir, they must have had a dominant back hair gene somewhere in their ancestry, because man were they hairy little buggers."

"And the little green men just *carried* McKay off?"

Ford's grunt of affirmation--although it very well could have been a 'yes, Sir'--was lost in the sounds of their feet crunching through the underbrush, and then sliding to an almost halt as Ford took a sharp right around something that looked to be an alien oak. It might have even been an oak, for all John knew, if it was okay for oak trees to have green bark.

Because that was the thing with this planet. Everything was green. They'd stepped out of the jumper into a vibrant green field of tall, waving grass. Ahead of them, there had been the lush forest-jungle. They'd looked up to the sky and there had even been a faint greenish pall there, too. It was a clear day, but John now thought he should have taken the sky's color for the warning it was so obviously meant to be. Skies were not meant to be green. The only times they were, at least on Earth, there were storms on the horizon. Bad storms. 50 year storms.

When they were back on a straight path through the foliage, Ford said, "But 'carried' would imply that they might have been burdened down by his weight some. Really, I'd just say they took McKay. I did mention that they were fast little buggers, didn't I, Sir?"

"You did. And that Teyla's tracking them." Because that was where Ford had finished the abbreviated version of the story the first time he'd told it, when he'd paged John on his radio. 'McKay!' he'd said. 'Little green men! Teyla's tracking them! Come quick!' And John had taken off running.

"We should be right behind her now, Sir," Ford said. "She should be right up here, just ahead," and given the amount of time they'd been running, John certainly hoped so, because if she wasn't, they were doing a damn good job of losing themselves.

Ford, Rodney, and Teyla were only supposed to have traveled five minutes away from the jumper, at the most. That was where they'd told John they'd be, anyway, doing the whole exploration thing. Five had wandered into ten, though, as McKay had apparently kept seeing things that caught his eye. Then, Ford had back-tracked five minutes or so of that distance so that John would be able to find him, which had taken another few minutes, and then they'd taken off running through the underbrush, for what had to have been another fifteen already. If Teyla wasn't just ahead…

The radio on John's belt crackled to life, and he jerked it free and up to his mouth. "Sheppard." Part of him was really hoping it would be Rodney on the other end, saying he was free and pissed off and hungry, making the whole rescue operation a moot point, but of course that would have been too simple. It was Teyla.

"Major, the two of you are being louder than a stampeding herd of *Ragnu*s," she said, and John couldn't even venture a guess as to what those were, though they probably weren't small or quiet.

Her voice was as intense as it normally was, even made tiny by the radio, but John was also pretty sure he heard a note of amusement there. Which meant that she wasn't really annoyed at them making so much noise, which meant--

John didn't know what it meant exactly, but it probably meant that for the moment at least, Rodney was okay.

He was just about to page her through the radio to ask her, when suddenly they were nearly on top of her, then moving past her, even as they stumbled to a halt, Ford into the middle of a green spider plant-type thing, and John not any more gracefully.

"Teyla," John said, a little raggedly as he tried to steady his breathing. He hooked the radio to his belt again, then leaned forward and put his hands on his knees. Just for a few seconds, just to get a bit of his breath back. Then he stood up straight again and said, "Where's McKay? How far do you think they've taken him?"

"He is just beyond this rise," Teyla said, gesturing at the hill that suddenly seemed to materialize in front of them, now that John was actually looking for it. It too, of course, was green.

"I decided to wait down here for you, so that you would not go head-first into their ceremony."

"Ceremony?" John glared at the hill, as if it, personally, was to blame for this whole ordeal, or as if he could see through it, see what they were doing to McKay on the other side. He cocked his weapon, released the safety, and started forward again.

Only to be stopped by Teyla's hand on his arm, gentle but firm, holding him in place.

She said, "Listen."

So John did.

He heard a faint chanting and a dull, echoing booming noise, that sounded like it might be being made by this planet's equivalent of drums. If he listened really closely, he thought he could hear the crackling and popping of fire, but that very well could have been his imagination because he didn't smell any smoke. Still, back on Earth, he'd seen enough B-movies where the island natives did the whole chanting and banging the drum slowly thing to know that these sorts of ceremonies never ended well for the person who'd been taken hostage.

He shook Teyla's hand off and started up the hill more quickly than before, albeit more quietly, too. Behind him, he heard Teyla say, "McKay is not in any danger."

Maybe John should have trusted Teyla enough to know that if she said it, if she'd deemed McKay safe enough to let him out of her sight and come down the hill to meet them, it was probably true. That didn't stop him from lowering himself to the ground a few feet from the summit, though, and slithering the rest of the way up.

And then he started chuckling.

While there were hairy little green men and fires and drums and chanting and something that might, in movies found in the back rooms of video stores, be considered tribal dances being done by the little green ladies, Rodney wasn't looking much like a human sacrifice. No, not much like a human sacrifice at all.

He was sitting in one of a pair of tall (green, of course) chairs, and was being fanned with long, green fronds wielded by some of those little green men. Then, John's laughter turned into choked coughing, because in true B-movie fashion, other little green men were actually bowing down before Rodney--and the little green woman sitting in the other tall chair, now that John looked more closely, seemed to be holding onto Rodney's hand. Tightly.

"He is not in any danger," Teyla said again, coming up behind him and crouching down at his elbow. Ford stopped at the other. "From what I was able to understand, they think of him as a… god. Or a king, perhaps. An intended king? Something to do with a prophecy."

John pointed at the little green woman holding onto Rodney's hand. Except she wasn't just holding anymore. Now there seemed to be strokage. "Well," he said, "if she's the intended Queen, I think that's a good guess. The question is: how do we get him out of there without causing an inter-galactic incident?" They might have been small green men, but size wasn't everything, John knew. And they were outnumbered at least 20-1.

Then John saw Rodney look up to where they weren't really hiding on the crest of the hill, and a look of almost desperation passed across his face. He lifted the hand that was being stroked by the green woman, and jerked it twice in John's direction. The people down below seemed to take it as a sign that they were supposed to cheer, but John got the message.

"You can understand these people, Teyla? Can you talk to them?"

"Yes," Teyla said. "They seem to be speaking in a variation of--" But John wasn't listening anymore.

He stood up, feeling Teyla and Ford move into position behind him, angled his gun across his chest, and marched straight down the hill and into the camp.

Immediately, the natives started babbling away. Given their size, John was expecting them to sound something akin to the Chipmunks on TV. Small, high-pitched, squeaky voices, chittering. Not so. The men, at least, had deep, strong voices, made resonant and echo-y by the fact that they were pounding on their chests. From what John could tell, the women didn't sound much different.

Ahead of them, John saw Rodney stand up. He watched Rodney bat the fanning fronds away, as they were suddenly hitting him around the shoulders and the neck rather than doing the fanning they were supposed to do. John saw him glare at the frond bearers, and then watched as they skittered away. Then, Rodney opened his arms up in John's direction, in Teyla and Ford's, and the natives parted to let them pass.

As soon as they were near enough, Rodney reached out and clasped John's shoulder. He smiled widely, but through clenched teeth said, "Took you long enough, Major. Did you decide to stop for refreshments on the way here? Or were you just going to stay up there and enjoy the show?"

"Good to see you're moving up in the world, McKay," John answered through his own teeth, smiling back just as widely.

"Get me out of here," was all Rodney had a chance to say in reply, before his hand was tugged away from John's shoulder, and back into the grasp of the woman who was apparently his intended.

She said something to Rodney, but Teyla was the one who answered, speaking in the same deep, sonorous tones of the people. There was lots of hand waving and foot stamping on both sides, too, and then the little green woman began to pout.

John readied his weapon, because pouting women could be dangerous beings.

But then, with a final high-pitched cry, the green woman flounced away, and her people echoed her cry before turning their backs on John and company.

"We may leave now," Teyla said softly. She had a hand on Rodney's back and was already ushering him away from the tall chairs, through the silent, still people. No more dancing, no more chanting, just silence. It was like they were acting as if the 'intruders' didn't exist.

"We might want to pick up the pace a bit," John answered. He could feel the eyes of the natives on their backs, and the sooner they got into the jungle-woods where it would be harder for an angry mob to ambush them, the happier he'd be.

"We are in no danger. I told them that McKay was a powerful god in his own right--because that is what Aye-isha was offering to help him become, by taking her hand in marriage--and that he already had a people to call his own. I said that these people would die without him. I said that their prophecy, which she thought referred to Rodney, had not yet come to pass, because that man, he will have no claims on him."

As she spoke, John could almost see Rodney's ego inflating.

"And she actually *believed* you?" John asked.

"Well of course she did," Rodney answered. "I do possess several god-like qualities, you know. You lesser beings just haven't realized it yet."

Out of the corner of his eye, John saw Ford roll his eyes.

"I think I should add this to my list of credentials," Rodney continued, his voice taking on a teasing edge as they finally reached the crest of the hill, and started back down the other side. "Rodney McKay, god. I think I should paint it on the door of my lab, what do you think?"

It was John's turn to roll his eyes.

"We'll need to work out a schedule for worship, of course. Sometime that doesn't interfere with my saving all of your lives on a daily basis and meal times, but I'm sure we can work something out."

"Worship," John repeated.

"*Yes*, worship. Gods get worshipped. It's in the god handbook. So, worship."

Rodney looked over his shoulder at John as he spoke, a somewhat smug grin on his face. The effect was ruined, however, as he tripped over a tree root and was saved from falling flat on his face only by Teyla's grip on the back of his jacket.

"Worship," John said again, then with a smirk of his own: "Maybe later."

End.


End file.
